Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Sweet Stuffed. This actually strikes me as a creepy picture of him, but it still makes me and Mike laugh every time we look at it.

The black/white divider-line down his face never fails to delight me. And his nose always reminds me of The Wizard Oz's Scarecrow's. :)

Floofy, to be sure, but he still spends as much time in the box fan-cooled bedroom as in the air conditioning-cooled main room on days like this, so the heat must not bother him as much as it does us.

He jumps up onto the bed beside me every time I begin writing in my journal, sometimes resting his soft, warm head across a page until I gently and ohhhhhh-soo-sloooooooowly slide the book out from under him. Dear little soul. ♥

Monday, July 27, 2015

'Making up my oatmeal "packet" for work when I noticed how pretty my gathered supplies were. The rest of the apartment still feels chaotic and in need of a good sort after last weekend's trip, but this tiny corner, at least, looks sweet. Temperatures in the high eighties and low nineties this week, and a big BLECCCCHHHH may I say to that! But! I try not to complain, so. . . ! I've lost ten pounds since deciding once again to get back on-track this summer, so there is that, and there is Mike's thirty-ninth birthday tomorrow, and my days off tomorrow and Wednesday, and a healthy cat currently curled up beside the patchwork cupboards, and both a family reunion and a visit with Aunt Laurie in the weeks ahead (assuming I get the days off, but I'm hopeful), and now, brown sugar-cinnamon oatmeal and almonds packed into my work bag.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Yesterday afternoon was entirely too humid a day to begin this project, but I wanted to take advantage of my day off by at least starting it. Off and on for about four hours--breaking only for iced tea, lemonade, a chocolate brownie (thank you, Mom), and a zucchini-Parmesan omelet (thank you, Dad)--I finished most of the first coat. This shade is "Rally Green" by Sherwin Williams, and even after so much painting, I'm finding it hard to describe to my mom. "Kind of a springy green with some aqua in it? More vivid or a deeper shade than old jadeite dishes, but kind of like that?!" Then the light changes, and the color above becomes more like this, ↓

and what I had almost wanted to describe as looking tropical now seems more workaday vintage green. I like the color, in any case, and am about to begin round two of the painting. I'm still so surprised that our apartment's building manager has given us permission to paint at all, I almost couldn't help but be delighted to see just about any color on the walls. :) I actually love the whole barely-there shades of white and pink and pale-pastels-in-general in shabby chic decorating and did my bedroom in my first all-to-myself apartment in 2002 in the softest pink, and if we had more room here, I'd likely decorate a guest room or something that way again. For now, though, and in the little space we have--our entire apartment is only 542 square feet--I like the rainbow of bolder colors we have here. More iced tea, then, and back to my springy/tropical/ jadeite/etc.-covered paintbrush.

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Mike and I took a bus to Yankee Stadium this weekend, Mike's first time in New York and my first visit to the Bronx. The Yankees are Mike's and his dad's team, and since my mom is from New York, more than a few people in my family are Yankees fans, so it was especially sweet to see the stadium finally. I thought the six-hour bus trip would find me and Mike featured in a "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" magazine column, but we experienced both the travel and the heat-index-of-103°-temperature and lived to tell the tale.

Mom made up a gift basket and this cute Snoopy card for us and arranged to have it waiting in our hotel room. The card was one of the first things Mike unpacked when we got home this afternoon. :)

We got to visit with both my parents this weekend, as well, so it was a sweet weekend all-around, with Dad loading up our rental car with vegetables from his garden before we got back on the road.

Mike got to see Alex Rodriguez warming up for the game. This was the only player we saw signing autographs for the kids before the game too.

In my favorite photo from the game, Yankee Stadium's rooftop lights and flags are reflected in Mike's sunglasses. A happy accident. This trip was both our vacation-ish thing this summer and my birthday present for him, so to look at our pictures later and see Yankee Stadium in his eyes was great fun.

And as a final sweet post-game surprise, we discovered while looking up video online of one of the game's home runs that we can be seen in one of the crowd shots that aired on TV after the game, since a guy sitting in front of us caught the ball. 'Not bad for our first visit to the stadium. :)

And another two days off before I have to go back to work. 'A most refreshing and much-needed break. Next on this summer's to-do list is painting the bathroom and bedroom. Yes, the building manager gave me permission to paint! Onward and upward. :)

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Seeing the Queen Anne's Lace in bloom each summer reminds me of how my mom showed me, when I was probably four or five years old, how to tint its petals by letting it sit in a glass of food color-ed water awhile. In its normal cream-colored form, it is one of my favorite flowers, but revisiting childhood for a bit as I watched the tiny flower clusters take on color has been sweet too. A blue bloom for me today, then, and I'll pass it on to Mom when we see each other tomorrow. ♥

Sunday, July 12, 2015

One of my friend Sommer's aunts died on Thursday, I learned Friday afternoon. Aunt Cathy used to work at the little café inside our local Walmart store--back in the early 1990s when the hometown Walmart was not a "supercenter" and still had a tiny café near the entrance--and Sommer and I would always stop in to visit her while out running around in high school, gabbing with her between her serving other customers and really gabbing with her on slower evenings when she had more free time. The first of their family reunions that I went to, this sweet lady offered me a chair in her backyard and I sat down only to have it crash and splinter into pieces underneath me. After various relatives helped me up off the ground, I don't know whom amongst all of us laughed the most. Even though I had just met some of the family for the very first time, it was almost too funny to be embarrassing. :) When Sommer died during our last few months of high school, it was one of Cathy's daughters who was the first family member to come out to my parents' house the day it happened to talk with us, and it became my mom and I who would visit Cathy at Walmart, the three of us catching up on family news and helping each other through those horrible first weeks and months. I last saw her in 2010--randomly bumping into her a hundred miles from her home, which made it even funnier and sweeter to us. A huge hug, then, at our last meeting, and more laughter and family news shared before we parted. My heart has been with her family this weekend, and I send them all so much love.

Thursday, July 9, 2015

My younger brother's wife had just finished her nursing school exams and I was home for the wedding on a weekend-break from packing up our old apartment to move here, so I'm surprised we look as carefree as we do in this 2011 picture. It is one of my favorites. Happy birthday to my sister-in-law, and a happy anniversary to her and my younger brother. ♥

Monday, July 6, 2015

I received a surprise package last week from Mike's sister. She has been taking painting classes for awhile now, and she wrapped one of her tiny canvases of blue Hydrangeas--one of my favorite flowers--in sunny yellow tissue paper as a gift. Love! ♥ Both the thoughtfulness and the vivid colors made my day.

Gorgeous. Handmade and homemade gifts are the best.

This afternoon, I finally decided on a spot for it on our little cookbook shelf.

Saturday, July 4, 2015

I work tonight, so we celebrated the holiday yesterday here. This recipe for berry crisp got a thumbs-up from Mike, and we enjoyed it while watching Jaws, a July tradition for us.

While I was making the crisp yesterday, Mike told me to look at the baseball game on TV and see if anyone looked familiar. Yessssssssssssssss. The man pictured above looks exactly like Mike's dad, and we paused the game for awhile so we could marvel at the resemblance. If I had a picture of my father-in-law in-profile, you would see it instantly. So strange. We watched for this guy every time a player batted left.

And sweet Stuffed finally seems to be back to himself. ♥ He's even been sleeping in the bedroom with us again, after almost two months of keeping to himself elsewhere. Dear little cat.A happy day to you all.

"At any given moment, no matter where you are, there are hundreds of things around you that are interesting and worth documenting."

~ Keri Smith

"I think that one must always be in love. To be in love with a person is, of course, ideal, but you can be in love with a flower, a tree, an idea. . . ."

~ Gloria Vanderbilt

"BE KIND WHENEVER POSSIBLE.

IT IS ALWAYS POSSIBLE."

~ THE DALAI LAMA

"Have a heart that never hardens,

and a temper that never tires,

and a touch that never hurts."

~ Charles Dickens

"Love is, above all, the gift of oneself." ~ Jean Anouilh

"Celebrate people who are in your life-- past and present, close by as well as far away. Thank everyone who contributes to your sense of well-being and joy, whether you know them personally or not. Every day, think of all the people who help make your life so rich and rewarding."

~ Alexandra Stoddard

"I'm not expecting to grow flowers in the desert,

But I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime."

~ "In a Big Country" by Big Country

"If you are any good at all, you know you can be better."

~ Lindsey Buckingham

"What thou lovest well remains,

the rest is dross ~

What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee ~

What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage."

~ Ezra Pound

"Let us make memories carefully of all good things, rejoicing in the wonderful truth that while we are laying up for ourselves the very sweetest and best of happy memories, we are at the same time giving them to others." ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

"There are things you do because they feel right & they may make no sense & they may make no money & it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other & to eat each other's cooking & say it was good."

~ Brian Andreas

"There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing." ~ Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

"Years ago, my mother used to say to me --she'd say, 'In this world, Elwood, you must be --' She always called me Elwood. 'In this world, Elwood, you must be oh, so smart or oh, so pleasant.' Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. And you may quote me."

~ Elwood P. Dowd in Mary Chase's play Harvey

"One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore faith in yourself." ~ Lucille Ball

"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened." ~ Anatole France

"A house with Daffodils in it is a house lit up, whether or not the sun be shining outside." ~ A. A. Milne

"When something is too beautiful or too terrible or even too funny for words, then it is time for poetry."

My Beloved Pink & White Garden :)

"Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great, make you feel that you too can become great." ~ Mark Twain************

"Be not afraid of going slowly. Be afraid of standing still."~ Chinese proverb

After My First 5K :)

During My First Half Marathon :)

~*~*~*~*~*~*~* "Is life worth so much trouble?"

* "It depends what one wants in return."

~ Daughter to Student in The Ghost Sonata by August Strindberg~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot."

~ Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's, spoken by Holly Golightly

"When we have sampled much and have wandered far and have seen how fleeting and sometimes superficial a lot of the world is, our gratitude grows for the privilege of being part of something we can count on—home and family and the loyalty of loved ones. We come to know what it means to be bound together by duty, by respect, by belonging."

~ Thomas S. Monson

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.

These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern.

Beautiful people do not just happen.”

~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Death: The Final Stage of Growth

“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.”